"I'm happy and I'm grateful," she told PEOPLE backstage. "The show showed a different side of me, the mother side of me. And this whole experience has been so amazing. Everybody on the show is so amazing. I love them."

"I'm just happy that I made new friends that hopefully we'll have this bond forever doing this experience," she said. "Maybe [partner] Sasha [Farber] can come over and still teach me some moves."

Jack Osbourne, for one, plans to get together after the show is over. "The good thing is, when we do get eliminated, if we do get eliminated, we can go to New York and hang out with Nicole," he said of himself and partner Cheryl Burke. "We'll hit up the shore."

The other couple in jeopardy Monday was Bill Engvall and Emma Slater. And Slater, who is Farber's girlfriend, said she was shocked by the elimination.

"She's a great dancer," she said of Polizzi. "We lost a great couple tonight."